- Pre-snap motion taking over the NFL: The New York Giants were the only team this past season to use motion on less than half of their offensive snaps.
- Denver Broncosincrease pre-snap motion usage: They went from 41% pre-snap motion last year — dead last in the NFL — to 55% this year.
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Almost two-thirds of all NFL plays in the 2025 season were preceded by some kind of offensive shift or motion before the snap. Since PFF first began tracking pre-snap motion in 2014, its usage has increased each and every season.
This is an evolution of football that would have looked foreign fifteen years ago. Not because a team employing motion on over half of their offensive plays is totally new to us. The 2014 Miami Dolphins, for example, had a 63.3% shift/motion rate — right around the current league average in 2025.
It’s at the opposite end of the spectrum where this evolution becomes really apparent. Referring to an offense as “static” due to its lack of pre-snap movement is quickly becoming extinct.
The New York Giants were the only team this past season to use motion on less than half of their offensive snaps. That’s a big change from just four years ago when 15 NFL offenses sat below the halfway mark, including the AFC champion Cincinnati Bengals.
Even the league’s longest-serving offensive minds have accepted that you either adapt to the world of pre-snap motion, or you get left behind. Look no further than Sean Payton. His Denver Broncos offense went from 41% pre-snap motion last year — dead last in the NFL — to 55% this year.
We all know why NFL offenses employ movement before the snap. It is best described as an information-gathering tool that forces defenses to declare coverage while also requiring your opponent to communicate under time pressure.
Of course, motion can reveal whether the defense is playing man or zone, but its benefits go far beyond that. It can disrupt pattern-matching rules, manipulate box counts and create favorable one-on-one matchups. It also allows receivers to hit their routes with momentum, improving the overall timing and efficiency of passing concepts.
At the very top of the league in pre-snap motion usage last season was the Buffalo Bills. They employed it 80% of the time. Their division rival Miami Dolphins lead the league over the course of the last half-decade. Mike McDaniel has always been a huge proponent of pre-snap motion, as proven by Miami’s 83.5% rate during his time in charge. He now takes over a Los Angeles Chargers offense that ranked right around league average last season in motion usage.
When assessing motion splits, we observe some likely outcomes. As you can imagine, pre-snap motion is much more prevalent in first quarters (72% of plays) than fourth quarters (54% of plays), thanks to its scripted and time-agnostic nature. Pre-snap movement rates plummet to 41% in two-minute situations.
NFL offenses are equally likely to run or pass when employing motion — they have done a good job at masking obvious tells that motion may have previously brought about.
However, motion can serve as a tell for more precise play calls. Screen passes, for example, implement pre-snap movement over three-quarters of the time. In the case of the 2025 Atlanta Falcons, 62 of their 64 screen passes were preceded by some kind of pre-snap movement. That’s a fairly significant key that defenses can prepare for.
League-wide shift/motion rate since 2014
| Season | Shift/Motion Rate |
| 2025 | 63.9% |
| 2024 | 61.5% |
| 2023 | 56.4% |
| 2022 | 55.4% |
| 2021 | 51.8% |
| 2020 | 50.0% |
| 2019 | 46.8% |
| 2018 | 43.0% |
| 2017 | 40.5% |
| 2016 | 38.4% |
| 2015 | 38.0% |
| 2014 | 37.6% |
This kind of steady increase could not be justified if the underlying numbers didn’t unequivocally prove that pre-snap motion is superior to a static snap. They do.
Look at any figure you want, and it will agree that over the fairly large sample of the 2025 season, employing pre-snap motion provides an offensive advantage. Plays preceded by motion resulted in higher overall EPA per play, more passing yards per attempt, more yards per carry, a higher touchdown rate, a lower turnover rate… I could keep going.
One stark improvement brought about by motion is in the overall completion percentage, which, in 2025, grew from 59.7% in the absence of pre-snap movement to 64.9% with it.
When comparing with previous years, it is noteworthy that offenses haven’t particularly gotten any more effective when employing motion over the past five years. As offensive play callers continue to tweak and refine their pre-snap structure, defenses are becoming equally comfortable with their requisite coverage adjustments and checks.
However, the fact remains that if any defensive coach could vote to eliminate the usage of pre-snap offensive movement in football, they would. It remains a needless headache that defenses must deal with more frequently than ever before.
As long as defenses continue to rely on match-zone coverages designed to protect against a wide range of offensive concepts, motion will remain a permanent staple of modern football.
Where is the limit on pre-snap motion usage?
In the 2024 season, the league-wide motion rate took a considerable leap of over 5% from the previous season. It was the kind of jump that would make one question whether we were due for a course correction in 2025.
Instead, NFL offenses consolidated their love of motion this past year, with the rate growing for the 11th straight season. It makes you wonder where the limit truly is. It’s impossible to know if we are close to the maximum amount of motion because the reasons against using it are so heavily outweighed by its benefits.
One of the problems motion can theoretically create is increased confusion at the snap among your 11 players, leading to more offensive penalties. Some will also argue that motion can just muddy the picture for your inexperienced quarterback who struggles to identify defensive checks.
Both of the above points can be easily disproven. While pre-snap motion was used on 64% of plays this past season, it accounted for only 54% of offensive penalties. Meanwhile, first- and second-year quarterbacks were better with motion than without it in 2025, by essentially any metric.
The only true obstacle standing in the path of motion completely enveloping offensive football is the challenge of new coaches integrating their full array of pre-snap movement to a new offense in a short space of time.
This offseason will serve as a tremendous test of how quickly this can be done. We have seen 14 new offensive play callers and systems introduced over the past couple of months to teams across the NFL.
This record-level coaching turnover may result in some offenses choosing to start off simple, emphasizing the fundamentals before layering in more complex pre-snap additions in the following seasons.
Will 2026 be the first year we witness pre-snap movement take a step back? The data suggests it’s unlikely, but you should never underestimate how keen coaches are to execute the basic fundamentals in their first year.
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